Etymologies

Examples

Superbly situated, magnificently endowed as to climate, the _chef-lieu_ of the Bouches du Rhône must be called a slatternly beauty; whilst embellishing herself, putting on her jewels and splendid attire, she has forgotten to wash her face and trim her hair!

Playing the malevolent, abrasive junkie single mother of a missing kidnap victim, a slatternly, slack-jawed racist, Ryan adopted a drunkard's waxen pallor, honked up the full braying working-class Boston accent and, in those seven minutes, ran a gamut of emotions, from sullen resentment to inappropriate levity and a final descent into abject sobbing – a magnificent shipwreck of a performance.

"Young Adult" : Charlize Theron as a slatternly, hilariously nasty writer of young-adult novels who is, in fact, delusional in her determination to reconnect with a high-school sweetheart and rescue him from a marriage she imagines to be unhappy.